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Sourdough Semolina Country Bread

Sourdough Semolina Country Bread

I have converted a favorite sourdough recipe to make some loaves made with durum flour. I decided to just call them my Sourdough Semonlina Country Bread.

I made a large batch of dough. I was planning on baking them in my WFO. Plans were changed when Mike told me my car needed to be taken in for a service and we would be going out after it was done. I just pulled them out of the frig early and baked them up in my EO.

Makes 5 loaves - I have various sizes - I adjusted the sizes to fit my proofing baskets.

Ingredients Bakers Percentage

1088 gm Bread Flour 60%

726 gm Durum Flour 40%

1020 gm Spring Water 56% - Overall Hydation will be 65%

28 gm Olive Oil 1.2%

28 gm Avacado Honey 1.2%

44 gm Sea Salt 1.5 - 2%

Active Sourdough Starter @ 100% hydration

906 gm

1st Build - The night before mix

34 gm Active starter

226 gm water

226 gm flour

2nd Build - next morning

486gms ripe starter

226 gms water

226 gms flour

906 gms Starter will be ready in about 3 hours in a warm enviroment - remove excess for next seed -

I do all my mixing by hand. Mix all ingredients holding back the sea salt until after the dough has been mixed to a shaggy mass, rested, mixed by hand adding in the salt moistened on my hands. Do apx. 2 to 3 S&F hourly. Apx. 3 to 4 hours dough should be ready divided, rested, shaped and placed into covered bannetons and refrigerated overnight.

Warm up loaves and test for final proof..When ready. Bake on stones in a pre-heated, pre-steamed oven. I pre-heat my oven 485F and bake with steam at 485F for 10 to 15 min. Remove steaming towels, Set oven on convection heat and finish baking adjusting my oven temperature till my loaves are nicely browned and done. Turn off oven, crack door open and leave my loaves in for apx. 5 to 10 min. Remove, preheat my oven for the next loaves.

The flavor was very pleasing without being overly sour. The chew was also pleasing. It makes a delicious toast, sandwich bread, bruschetta or Garlic toast for enjoying with pasta.

Next time I will up the hydration for the thirsty durum flour and also add more durum flour. I also enjoy this type of bread made using an dry yeast Biga.

This locally San Diego harvested Avocado Honey is very dark..looks just like molasses and even taste a bit like it.

I didn't notice the flavor in the loaves..so little of it was used.

I've been saving on using parchment paper lately and really enjoying loading my loaves without it..I just sprinkel regular flour on my wooden paddles and a little on top of the loaves before, turning them onto the paddle. I managed all 5 loaves with none sticking. First using my larger paddle, placing a loaf and then the smalled paddle to place the next one side by side. Making pizza's has really helped me practice getting my loaves off a floured peel. I suppose you could use cornmeal, semolina to do this also..but I don't care for the way they burn and are a bit messy on my stones on in my wfo.

I should have let the steam out my oven before snapping this photo : ) I've been placing my microwaved hot

towels in those saved pans from purchased pies. They work great and I don't have to worry about messing up

any of my loaf pans or pre-heating them..they go in once for pre-steaming and come out after final steaming still

All kinds of honey blossom varieties available. Avocado hills surround my neighborhood..nice because the trees are also green year round. I can't think of anything they don't grow in this valley.

I've even filmed once a whole hive of bees arriving and within a few minutes dissappearing into my attic...the little group of scouts arriving the day before was my clue they were coming..lucky I had the exterminator waiting before they started dispensing honey in my attic..the hormone scent they leave will have them coming back every year if you don't get them completely cleaned out...so it's worth the expense after they are dead to have the bodies and mess completely cleaned out. They like east facing attics. Took a while for this desert raised woman to get used to and spoiled with all this wild life, local produce, meat, honey and fish...the desert is not to far away either :)

That oven spring sure helps when my loaves are over proofed like some of these were.

Crust, crumb color are so nice. We too use your steaming method too but don't get spring like that but, Will switch to tin pans and larger towels now. San Diego sure is the place for avocado products! We did get some Golden Temple Duram Atta flour (with the bran) yesterday in the Indian aisle at the Chinese market. It is a Smuckers product (American) made in Canada. Any more countries involved in this and you andwould think globlization was at work :-)

I use these small square white terry towels we purchase by the bundels from Costco. Mike likes them for working on his bikes..they come in handy for all sorts of things. I just used 3 here. I really dislike messing up my loaf pans and now these old pies pan that I've saved a lot over the years, work great.

This durum flour came from Nuts on Line 'packaged great' and it's just as nice as the durum I also order from KAflours.

Great breads, Sylvia. I think I missed the post where you explain your steaming method and it looks interesting. Do you use some special towels? Do you soak them before you preheat them, or you just moist them a bit?

I use plain white terry towels..sometimes referred to as bar towels in beverage industry. They are folded over and rolled up tightly and soaked to dripping wet, placed into a glass microwavable dish or bowl and nuked until really hot about 4 minutes for 4 towels on high power. This gets the center of the towels very hot..as this how microwave ovens heat, inside out, I believe. I just put 2 each into 2 pie pans add some boiling water if there isn't enough from the towels to make about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of water in the bottom of the pans.

Have tongs handy..you'll need them to move and open up the towels a little after they are nuked. This allows lots of steam to start coming out. Put them into the oven. Even one pan makes plenty of steam. Your not going to see steam in the oven while the bread is baking because the air is hot..but there's plenty there. You'll see when the pans are removed the steam coming out of the towels.

I steam from above because I keep my oven stone shelf on the bottom of my oven.

My towels have never dried out and I have left them in my very hot oven for up to 20 minutes..just make sure they are very sopping wet and have a little water in the bottom of the pans you use. Simple, easy and the safest method I used for me and my oven. Try it you'll see.

My oven measures inside 24". The two oven stones came with my GE Profile electric wall ovens. The top oven is convection and has a special recessed rack to hold the two stones that can be lifted in or out. I measured the stones and each one is 10 1/4" across and the dept is a little longer to fit into the rack..they pretty much go wall to wall with a little open space on the sides. The instructions say to use the stones on the lowest shelf. The oven has a covered heating element on the bottom and broiler heating element on the top and can be used with the convection on or off and several timing and warming features I like. GE appliances are not my favorite and so far I've replaced my dishwasher and frig with kitchenaid...but I really have no complaints on the oven..it does a great job so far and hasn't broke down and neither has the gas island cooktop. Did you know you can clean your dirty oven stones like new by just leaving them in on the cleaning cycle? I've done it several times, because the pizza's especially can leave stains.

What a super looking collection of breads you have there! The colour of the crust and the soft open crumb have a lot of eye appeal, and despite what you say about the scoring I think it looks very good...so there. :^)

Like thomaschacon, ever since I adopted the S.ylvia's A.wesome S.team S.ystem the jump and crust of my breads has improved dramatically. If TFL had a hall of fame you'd be an obvious candidate for introducing this technique to the forum. Many thanks!

Hello Sylvia, You did soooo good. Your loaves are beautiful, nice scoring, and I see some ears on those loaves. Like I said before, you just keep getting better and better. Those towels are really doing an outstanding job inside the oven. Gotta try that technique. Hope all is well with you and yours, Howard

Thank you for the nice comments. Always great to hear from you and see what you've baked. I've really been admiring your Pain au Levain Rye bread lately..I have med. rye flour, first clear and only need a couple of others..if I can get them together, I would love to bake it..the directions are written so nicely with the photos and I like this kind of rye bread it looks so delicious. It's been to busy for much baking around here lately..I'm off now to my youngest 15 yr old grandson's graduation from middle school.

Thank you very much for your the 2 Build method..I use it all the time!

Incidentally, I don't know whether of not you have read Daniel Wing's and Alan Scott's book The Bread Builders, if not it's a wonderful book, especially for bakers like yourself who use wood fired ovens. It also has a very comprehensive description of how the chemistry works with natural leavens (and commercial yeast). I was particularly interested by the description of Representative Natural Leaven Breads (page 48), where they describe in a fair amount of detail what makes San Francisco sourdough bread distintive from other sourdoughs. The book also contains photos and plans for building wood fired ovens in Chapter Nine (page 173).

Just thought I would mention this terrific source of information, in case you haven't seen it.

Take care and keep on baking those lovely loaves and pizzas that look so delicious,

ordered this book so many times and decided not to because I thought it would be just mostly about building an oven..now you've stirred my interest in it and I think it does definately belong in my growing collection :)

On Amazon's site they allow you to view certain segments of the book including the table of contents. To be sure you want to buy it, take a look at the table of contents. Oven construction is ancillary in this book. I think Wing and Scott should have titled the book along the lines of How BreadWorks (smile). Anyway, I didn't see a single bread formula/recipe in the book. If someone is looking for bread formulas this isn't the book they will want to buy. On the other hand if someone wants to understand the fundamental chemistry of what makes natural leavening happen and how various flours are affected by the process this is an excellent treatise, written in a very concise way allowing a home baker to understand the information.

Mebake for the nice comments! My stone rack does look weighed down and does recess a little bit in the center..but it is a recessed rack made especially to hold the stones..funny does look as though it's being weighed down.

Fortunately my oven is very well insulated, so I get by with steaming with one cup of boiling water in a pan, but I ever have to bake in a less tight shutting oven, I will keep your steaming method in mind.

My oven has a venting fan that runs while it is in operation..I can feel the air coming out the vents...why it does this..I don't know. It doesn't seem to interfer with the oven getting steamed up..why...I don't know that either :)

Hi Sylvia :^)I can't get over that steamy oven photo - wow - your steaming method is so effective!Beautiful durum breads!, and thanks for posting a picture of that dark and beautiful avocado honey - another California culinary treasure I'm sure! I've never heard of avocado honey but it looks so flavorful.:^) breadsong

Wow, it's been a long day of celebrating father's day..it was fun and I'm just getting to answer your post. I always appreciate your taking the time to stop by :)

The honey is delicious and doesn't seem to be so sweet because of the molasses flavor..it tastes so like molasses. They make all kinds of honey around here..seems whatever blossoms..they make honey from..I think the best honey IMHO comes from the wild organic flowers ..you know for sure they haven't been sprayed. The flavor of clover blossom honey is my favorite flavor and next is orange blossom. I can't remember 'senior moment' if I have yet seen a lavender honey..some lovely lavendar fields here that sell everything made of lavendar plants. A lot of the wild bee colonies are becoming Africanized bees.

your recipe for the base of our semolina pizza dough and, exactly the same, Italian Semolina Garlic Herb and Sun Dried Tomato bread for tonight's dinner. Made it with a combo YW and SD starter. It sure looks good so far. !Thanks

Sounds like a good ol pizza night and then some...sure hope you give us a peek.

I've been trying to get some pizza's going. The local Fair bought up most all the oak wood..they want $98 a wheelbarrel and what I got was still to green. I have a little seasoned and saving it for the 4th.

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